Barney Diver and his mother Caroline are unhappy at the lack of help available to them at South West Acute Hospital.
A severely autistic Enniskillen man is having to endure acute pain as he waits on an X-ray and vital operation.
Jerome Diver is highly autistic and unable to speak or communicate. He has been waiting on this operation on his sinuses for three years.
Speaking to the Herald, his mother Caroline explained Jerome, also known as ‘Barney’, has had health problems from the age of four. He was treated for Battles Disease at the Royal Victoria Hospital and, while blood tests eventually showed him not to have the condition, the treatment left him with damage to the left side of his brain.
Now at the age of 29 Jerome is living in pain and, due to the pressures placed on his mother, had to be placed into respite care last week.
The problem, as Caroline explained, is that she had been told that X-rays cannot be carried out at the South West Acute Hospital ahead of her son’s operation. And she has been told that he must, instead, travel to Altnagelvin.
And, that’s where his mother draws the line.
“I’m on an oxygen machine and there’s no way I will be able to do it. My machine is plugged in. How am I meant to go on a bus? There’s no way I can do it. It is just another problem I don’t need.
“They can do the X-ray here, but they’re refusing to give him something to keep him calm,” she claimed. “If the hospital up there can do it, why won’t they? Barney got this done in the old hospital, so I don’t understand it.”
She continued: “All we’re asking is to give him something for a simple X-ray instead of going up there. It is only going to take a matter of two minutes.”
Caroline suffers from alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a form of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and is the full-time carer for highly autistic Jerome. Despite her own health problems, all she wants is for her son to get the treatment he deserves.
“He does need it done, because he’s struggling to breathe through his nose and he’s finding life very difficult as he has no speech, no communication. You just have to go on his facial expressions when he is sick.”
On Monday last Jerome was put into respite care as his sickness got worse.
“He can’t stand the pain,” she explained. “ I have been to the chemist, the doctor and it just got to the stage where he had to be put into respite care.”
Despite the difficulties in transferring Jerome to Altnagelvin, Caroline is “waiting on a phone call to drop everything and go to Altnagelvin.”
“His ear is running, running, running. It is all coming from the sinus, where he needs the operation. The pain he is going through is just terrible and everyone knows that.”
She added: “At night time, you have to keep going in and checking on him. He’s on a lot of medication. He snores a lot and it is getting heavier and heavier. He’s been waiting over three years to get this done ,and I don’t think it is acceptable.”
A spokesman for the Western Health and Social Care Trust (Western Trust) said: “Respecting patient/client confidentiality the trust does not comment on individual cases. If a patient or their relative has any issue in relation to their treatment we would encourage them to raise these issues through the Trust’s comments and complaints system – the Patients’ Advocate Office. The Patients’ Advocate Office can be contacted on (028) 7161 1226. All complaints received are investigated promptly and a response issued to the person making the complaint as soon as possible.”
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